The WSJ Best Nonfiction of 2013

The year's best nonfiction took us from colonial New England to World War II Europe, from Bach's Leipzig to Margaret Thatcher's Britain. They explained physics, faith, Texas barbecue and even how to fix the banks.

Updated Dec. 14, 2013 1:20 a.m. ET

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The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong With Banking and What To Do About It By Anat Admati & Martin Hellwig (Princeton) In a year of important books about the recent economic crisis, the most important one told us simply how to stop the next one.

Speakeasy

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944By Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt) It's been a notable year for books on world wars. Christopher Clark, Max Hastings and Margaret MacMillan all published superb, and markedly different, accounts of the start of the First, and Ian Buruma's 'Year Zero' is an almost perfect account of what was left in the wake of the Second. The final volume of Rick Atkinson's account of the U.S. Army's role in liberating Europe in 1942-45, though, exceeded even the lofty expectations set by volumes one and two.

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For Adam's Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England By Allegra di Bonaventura (Liveright) Based on the detailed diary of a widowed Connecticut shipwright, this is an incomparably vivid panorama of Colonial New England society and a reminder of how deep slavery reached into Northern life.

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Bach: Music in the Castle of HeavenBy John Eliot Gardiner (Knopf) The Leipzig Kapellmeister's music is one of mankind's greatest achievements. John Eliot Gardiner has been Bach's most eloquent champion on the podium for decades and, now, in this extraordinary book.

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Margaret Thatcher By Charles Moore (Knopf) She took a country that was bankrupt, dishonored and demoralized and made it prosperous, confident and free. In this utterly absorbing biography (the first volume of two), Charles Moore shows us whence her self-belief came and how this shopkeeper's daughter knocked aside trade-union leaders, Tory grandees, Eurocrats and Argentine strongmen.

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The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age By Catherine Steiner-Adair (Harper) This riveting piece of journalism disguised as a self-help tome chronicles how new technology has disrupted family life. Parents pacify infants with iPhones, toddlers play violent games and pre-teens are sexting. The book offers no easy answers but gently encourages all of us who lack the discipline to unplug.

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The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics By Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky (Basic) Every minute of our lives is now dependent on technology, yet the wonders of basic science are foreign to many of us. Everyone who remembers even a bit of math should read this inviting and accessible survey of physics.

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The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue By Daniel Vaughn (Ecco) If barbecue is a religion in Texas, Daniel Vaughn is its St. Paul. As he rides down back roads and into rural towns to eat 'cue—great, good and gag-inducing—he paints a rich portrait of Texas as a whole.

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The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic LevelBy Jessica Wapner (The Experiment) There were numerous strong books about cancer in 2013, but this account of the decades of work to find a drug to fight chronic myelogenous leukemia was the strongest. Jessica Wapner translates the complexities of medical science for the general reader and demonstrates the necessity of collaboration between two traditional enemies, academia and Big Pharma.

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My Bright Abyss By Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Every generation needs someone to write about faith as lucidly as Christian Wiman does in this 'meditation of a modern believer.'

I will put in a vote for Holland's "Dam Busters" which came out in 2013 and has a lot of insight benefitting from the release of formerly classified information. This is a very well written book. I would also suggest Jesse Norman's "Edmund Burke".

This list reflects an omission from the Journal more broadly, and certainly from the Editorial Page more specifically. "Catastrophic Care: How American Healthcare Killed My Father, and What to Do About It", by David Goldhill, must be considered not simply one of the best non-fiction books this year, but one of the best and most important in decades. It's von Hayek for the Health Care industry. A longer letter to the Editorial page is probably in order.

I've never, in all my years as a native Texan, heard anyone in these parts (or elsewhere) refer to barbecue as " 'cue." And what exactly is a "rural town"? I hope these oddities are peculiar to the reviewer rather than the author. Oh, well. At least they didn't spell it (shudder) "barbeque."

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